Godawful Gail Daughtry

0 stars

Let’s start with a blurb from the IMDB.com trivia page for Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.

Director and Co-Writer David Wain and Co-Writer Ken Marino described their initial reaction to the celebrity sex pass premise as thinking it was “a really stupid idea” that “doesn’t make sense, goes nowhere, and has no point” – which they cite as the reason they felt compelled to make it. 

They were partially correct. It is a really stupid movie idea that doesn’t make sense, goes nowhere, and has no point. They were wrong on one crucial point: there was no reason to make Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.

For those unclear on the concept of a celebrity sex pass, it’s the idea that anyone in a relationship with another person has an imaginary sexual get-out-of-trouble free card should they ever get a chance to sleep with their celebrity crush. To use the example from the movie, at the end of a book signing, husband-to-be Tom Soursap McNoodleman (Michael Cassidy) gets caught by his fiancée, Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch), having backroom sex with Jennifer Aniston. She’s supposed to be OK with it because she is his crush. Of course, she’s not, and along with canceling her upcoming nuptials, Gail decides to go to LA and get revenge by banging her crush, John Hamm. ette 

To quote the creators, it’s a “really stupid idea.” About as dumb as naming a character Tom Soursap McNoodleman or thinking audiences are stupid enough not to wonder WTF Aniston is doing in this POS.

And it only goes downhill from there as we follow Gail and her best bud Otto (Miles Guitierrez-Riley) out to the West Coast for a series of increasingly silly encounters with the director’s friends, who do some increasingly odd, but thankfully brief cameos. Michael Ian Black plays a “Very Famous Star Maps Salesman.” Kerri Kinney plays “Psychic Journeys LLC Co-Owner Charlotte Manetti.” Thomas Lemon plays “King of the Whip Curl Remy Fontaine.” Weird Al Yankovic plays himself, only as a gun-toting celebrity protecting his mansion from Gail and her friends, while a silent Penn Jillette looks on. None of them is funny; with the possible exception of Weird Al, most in the audience won’t even register who they are.

As for the leads, both Deutch and Hamm have comic chops that just aren’t being used in Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. Watch Deutch as the homegrown hustler Peg Dahl in Buffaloed (click here), or Hamm as the Archangel Gabriel in Good Omens. That’s how good they can be. Sex Pass is them at their worst.